Madsen on Jeb Bush

January 31-February 2, 2015 -- Jeb Bush? Remember
this...
For the Jeb Bush for President fans, this commentary from
exactly 12 years ago is germane:
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition Jan 31-Feb 02, 2003
Compare and Contrast
Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities
by WAYNE MADSEN
Adolf Hitler would be proud that an American President is
emulating him in so many ways. Hitler, it will be
remembered, routinely ignored his military, other world
leaders, and the clergy. Bush seems to think that this policy,
which ultimately failed for Hitler, will work for him.
First, we should consider what Christian leaders are saying
about Bush.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America,
Frank T. Griswold III, says “I’d like to be able to go
somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being
from the United States” and blasts George W. Bush for his
saber rattling. Apparently, poppy Bush, an Episcopalian,
believes that the head of his church is wrong and his
wayward son is right.
From the Vatican, Pope John Paul II fires a shot over the bow
of the Bush administration by declaring, “war cannot be
decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the
common good, except as the very last option and in
accordance with very strict conditions.”
!
In a television ad, the chief ecumenical officer of the United
Methodist Church, Bishop Melvin Talbert, says that his fellow
Methodist’s rush to war “violates God’s law and the teachings
of Jesus Christ.” The Anglican House of Bishops has warned, “without
compelling new evidence to confirm that Iraq was stockpiling
chemical or biological weapons, war could not be morally
justified.”
Bush, who, during one of the presidential debates, said his
favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, has apparently decided
to ignore his teachings.
Maybe Bush has decided to turn away from Jesus Christ and
instead seek Providence from a tequila bottle, as his State of
the Union address with numerous examples of slurred speech
would seem to indicate.
Bush, a so-called compassionate conservative and born-again
Christian, can only find religious support from the same
group of hackneyed pseudo-Christians, hate mongers, and
religious cult leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson,
Franklin Graham, and Sun Myung Moon. Bush opts for this
band of zealots and ignores South African Anglican
Archbishop Desmond Tutu who asked, “When does
compassion, when does morality, when does caring come in?”
His words fall on deaf ears in the Oval Office.
Content with ignoring the church, Bush has also decided to
play with dynamite by ignoring some of America’s top
military minds.
One of them is retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the
military commander of Desert Storm. He told The
Washington Post that he has yet to be fully convinced that
war with Iraq is necessary. Schwarzkopf’s comments mirror
those of other retired top generals, including Anthony Zinni,
Wesley Clark, John Shalikashvili, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph
Hoar, and Merrill McPeak. Pentagon sources report that the
obviously mentally ill Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire
some members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff for not supporting
the war against Iraq. These included former Marine Corps
Commandant and now NATO commander General James
Jones and Army Chief of Staff General Erik Shinseki. Another
recipient of Rumsfeld’s wrath is the commander of the U.S.
Special Operations Command General Charles Holland who
Rumsfeld accused of having a “case of the slows” in carrying
out Bush’s war plans.
Pentagon sources report that morale among senior military
commanders is at an all time low. Rumsfeld rubbed salt into
open wounds when he ordered his “CINCs” (Commander-inChief) to drop that title, declaring that there is only one
“commander-in-chief” and that is Bush. Neither did it help
when Rumsfeld said military draftees never added any value
to the service.
Pentagon sources report that some officers are digging out
old message traffic that emanated from the Nixon White
House in 1974 during the height of the Watergate crisis. One
particular order from then Chief of Staff Al Haig stated that
military commanders were to ignore any orders from Nixon
unless they were authorized and co-signed by Haig. The fear
then was that Nixon might have ordered a military move on
the Congress during the impeachment hearings and cite
national security as the reason for suspending the
congressional proceedings against him.
In the end, however, Nixon understood the gravity of his
constitutional responsibilities. He resigned. Bush, on the
other hand, has done more to shred the Constitution than
any of his predecessors.
Of course, there was once another fanatic war-possessed
leader who tore up his constitution and routinely berated his
generals and ignored their advice. On July 20, 1944, Colonel
Claus von Stauffenberg strode into a conference room in
Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair compound with a briefcase bomb.
Although the plot to rid the world of Hitler once and for all
failed, it confirmed that a number of Germany’s top generals,
including its most famous, Erwin von Rommel, were strongly
opposed to Hitler’s fanaticism.
War making and saber rattling is not the only similarity of
Bush to Hitler. The German leader, along with Joseph
Goebbels, was also a master of propaganda. The Bush
administration, obviously putting its propaganda arm, the
White house Office of Global Communications, into full gear,
convinced nine European leaders to take out an ad, billed as
an ‘article,” in several European newspapers supporting the
Bush administration. Some of the usual suspects signed on to
the article, including Tony Blair, who, in addition to Barney
and Spot, is Bush’s favorite lap dog. But it is interesting to
point out some of the other leaders who backed Bush. They
include the Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary and
President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. These
countries, which joined NATO a few years ago with the
provision that they buy billions of dollars of American
warplanes, tanks, and other hardware, are virtual
subsidiaries of America’s military-industrial complex.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is only in
power because of the support he receives from a rabidly antiimmigrant party that mirrors John Ashcroft’s brand of
conservatism. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi heads a party that has
maintained strong links to Italy’s neo-fascist movement
whose founding father was Benito Mussolini. Likewise, the
parties of Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Portugal’s Jose
Barroso have historical links to the fascist movements of
Francisco Franco and Antonio Salazar, respectively.
Bush’s borrowing liberally from Hitler’s play book was not lost
on Germany’s former Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin,
who last September said Bush wanted a war with Iraq to
divert attention from domestic problems. She added, “That’s
a popular method. Even Hitler did that.”
Bush, who is content to win the support of Pentagon stooges
in Eastern Europe and neo-fascists elsewhere, has chosen to
ignore people like former South African President Nelson
Mandela who made no secret of his disgust for Bush when he
declared at a women’s forum, “One power with a president
who has no foresight — who cannot think properly — is now
wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who did more to
bring peace to the world in a couple of years than either of
the Bush’s have done in two presidential terms, said last year
that George W. Bush is a threat to world peace and that his
plans to attack Iraq will destroy the international coalition in
the war on terrorism. Former President Jimmy Carter and
Nobel Peace Prize laureate warned that a pre-emptive US
attack on Iraq would have catastrophic consequences.
Bush’s disparaging of the United Nations, world opinion, and
international statesmen is reminiscent of an April 28, 1939
speech by Hitler before the Reichstag:
“Members of the German Reichstag: The President of the
United States of America has addressed a telegram to me,
with the curious contents of which you are already familiar . .
. The President of the United States believes that in
conference rooms as in courts it is necessary that both sides
enter in good faith, assuming that substantial justice will
accrue to both. German representatives will never again
enter a conference that is for them a tribunal . . . Mr.
Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the
German armed forces will not attack, and above all, not
invade, the territory or possessions of the following
independent nations. He then names as those to which he
refers: Finland, Lithuania, Latvia,’ Estonia, Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain , Ireland,
France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Russia,
Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt
and Iran. I have first taken the trouble to ascertain from the
states mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves
threatened, and, what is most important, secondly, whether
this inquiry by the American President was addressed to us
at their suggestion or at least with their consent. The reply
was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so . . . I
have reunited the territories that have been German
throughout a thousand years of history-and, Mr. Roosevelt, I
have endeavored to attain all this without bloodshed and
without bringing to my people and so to others, the misery of
war . . . For my world, Mr. President, is the one to which
Providence has assigned me and for which it is my duty to
work. Its area is much smaller. It comprises my people alone.
But I believe I can thus best serve that which is in the hearts
of all of us a*” justice, well-being, progress and peace for the
whole community of mankind.”
As Congress cheerfully applauded Bush’s State of the Union
address, the Reichstag gave Hitler a thunderous reception.
Although Hitler’s oratory skills were light years beyond
Bush’s, the two speeches had something extremely
fundamental in common– they were packed with lies.
WAYNE MADSEN is a Washington, DC-based investigative
journalist and columnist.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20150131